Diary Of A Busker Day 279 Tuesday September 4th 2012 Winchester High Street 1. Opposite Oxfam, Time: 1:13-2:37pm, 2. Opposite Vodafone, Time: 2:52-4:26pm, 3. Opposite Bellis, Time: 4:59-5:35pm
A couple of songs in, Walter waves from across the road and comes over. ‘Same old faces, same old tune!’ he says, which makes me laugh. ‘Yeah Walter, same old tune, that’s for sure.’ I was playing La Vie En Rose, I think. He tells me more tales from his days of being a danceband conductor. ‘We had a guitarist and when he took a break for something or other, we’d (Walter gets hold of one of the tuning pegs on my guitar and does frantic turning motion)…so when he came back, they’d all be, you know, de-tuned!’ ‘That’s evil, Walter!’ He goes off…then comes back ten minutes later while I’m doing The Third Man; ‘Same old tune,’ he says again. And he’s not wrong there. He’s got some song ideas for me; he’d really like to hear me do Bridge Over The River Kwai. I say I’ll look into it.
As it’s Tuesday, Delia drops by and asks, as she usually does, about the son and heir. I say that he’s now starting to learn the guitar, at the grand old age of fourteen. ‘Oh good, you encourage him, won’t you?’ ‘Of course, Delia!’ She then tells me about something that happened to her in her youth. ‘My parents didn’t encourage me; I wanted to be in the movies, you know, but, oh no, my father didn’t approve.’ ‘No, I suppose back then, anything like that was looked on as little more than prostitution, eh?’ ‘Oh yes and my father, he was very Victorian you know. Anyway, one day a film company was in town and they wanted people to send in pictures of themselves so I sent mine in. But I didn’t hear from them, and I waited, you know. Then, much later, I found out that they HAD sent something back saying they wanted to see me but my father had not told me because he didn’t approve.’ ‘Oh no!’ ‘Oh, I was so upset, you know. A film role!’
I make hardly any money here; only £6.30 in over an hour. That’s half the usual hourly average. I’m moving! But it’s not much better up the road. In fact, it’s so bad that after only half an hour, I’ve had enough of being completely ignored. Weirdly enough, at the end, as I’m finishing packing up, a woman comes up and hands me a £5 note. This fills me with so much joy that I ask if she’d like a CD for her fiver. No, she doesn’t want a CD; she’d rather I just have the money. She talks in a foreign accent I can’t place – ‘The money I give you – it’s from a man I know in Sweden (that’s it)…he makes wooden things, for drums. He told me he would like me to give it to a, um…how do you say it, street musician?’ ‘Yes, that’ll do…or busker. Right, OK, well thank you very much.’ Strange, but nice…and unexpected. After she walks away, a man who’s been leaning against the wall near me says ‘Well, things are looking up!’ ‘Yeah, for a change. It was rubbish up til then,’ I say.
At my third spot, the money’s back to the usual rate, actually a bit better than that. But after thirty-five minutes I break a string; a rare occurrence. I decide not to replace it, but pack up and head for home. Just as I’m finishing, Mick turns up and we walk up the road together. ‘Winter’s coming along,’ he says. ‘That’s the one thing I don’t want to hear anyone say, Mick!’ ‘Oh well, they say it’ll be a mild one.’ ‘Do they? I still don’t want to think about it, sitting out here for four hours. I’m not getting any younger.’ “Hmm…yeah, I know what you mean.’ ‘Yeah, I’m going to have to work in a bookshop, or something,’ I say. ‘A bookshop?’ Mick says, incredulously.
Earnings: £30.85